Follow Your Heart: The Children from Hell

By Pajes Thomas

God's words are imprinted on the hearts of His people... even "The Children from Hell," as Pajes Thomas once referred to herself and her siblings. An unbelievable tale of shocking family abuse and unlikely survival - ensured only by the author's fierce adherence to the mandates of her own heart, despite the chaos around her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781463412814

Pajes Thomas

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Pajes Thomas was one of twenty-one children that was able to crawl out of the cesspool that she was born in. As an infant she was born being someone’s property. Then she went to having no rights at all. When she was old enough she became a work horse. Father and his friends used me as sex machines, Father deliberately kept my siblings and me ignorant. We weren't allowed to talk to anyone other then each other. This way we could’t tell anyone what was happening in our household. we were kept isolated from the rest of the world. We were taught to hate each other. Father abused us horribly physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually. We just tried to survive from day to day. But God doesn’t let the devil put more hardship on you than you can handle. He always gives you a way out. Its like you are incased in a large box or something, and He makes a hole in it for you to find your way out of what ever situation you are in, He won’t point the way out to you. It is your responsibility to find that hole on your own. Then when you find it you must have the courage to crawl through it. She found that hole and crawled through it. She has no recollection of what her Father looks like, what color his hair or eyes were. Perhaps this is because She feared and hated him so much. Perhaps just because of the pain that he caused her entire family to endure. We will never know the answers to these things, maybe it is best we don't. It is really not in our nature to hate anyone. I AM A SURVIVOR! YOU CAN BE TOO.

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FOLLOW YOUR HEART

THE CHILDREN FROM HELL

Pajes Thomas

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© 2012 by PAJES THOMAS. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 01/30/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0533-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-0531-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-1281-4 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011908171

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

About the Author

I DEDICATICATE THIS BOOK to my children, grandchildren, great-grand children, especially those who thought I was too hard on them during their growing up years. Sometimes it meant your life to mind and mind immediately. I realize you didn’t or couldn’t understand this at the time. I did what I had to do to keep you safe, fed and clothed. I know our life’s journey was tough. But for some people it just happens this way. We made it though, didn’t we?

You are all grown-up; with families of your own. Count your blessings. I pray this life’s journey will be easier for each of you. I am proud of each and every one of you. I love you very much. Keep on helping each other and don’t lose track of one another. I pray Jehovah God will bless and keep you in His heart forever.

I would like to give special thanks to everyone who helped us along life’s Rough Road. Thanks to you, I didn’t cave in, and I will finish my journey in peace.

I owe a very special thanks to Mrs. Bermingham, Mrs. Martin, Uncle Arthur,

Wealthy (my mother-in-law), and the man who owned the restaurant on Wells Street in Chicago.

Thanks to all of you, I made it. I have raised my children to adulthood. I want you to know that I have followed your example and helped as many people as I could on this tough road of life.

Last, but not least, I want to thank God for my husband, George, the only man that could have put up with all my faults, my funny ways and my family. I know Jehovah God has a special place in his heart for George. I am looking forward to living with him in paradise.

1 Samuel 16:7

God sees not as man sees,

For man looks at the outward appearances,

But God looks at the heart.

Introduction 

The six oldest children in my family were born in show tents. Our parents did not register our births when or after we were born. They did not have the time or money to worry about such trivial matters. According to Mother, when they lost a child, they dug a hole and buried it wherever they were camped. She said, I have three children buried in this way.

I can only approximate the dates and ages of my siblings and myself. There are no accurate records of some of our births. I have at least twenty-one siblings by three different women: the woman I call Mother, the woman I call Aunt Joe, and my sister, Vesta, who was just a girl.

I know the true mother of only four of the children. The women themselves don’t seem to know which children belong to them. I believe they didn’t want to accept the responsibility for us. We were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Father preformed abortions on all four of us girls whom he had impregnated. We were kept isolated and didn’t go to school. Our parents deliberately kept us ignorant. Father said, It is easier to control ignorant people. We were punished severely for talking to anyone other than our siblings. We were even tied to trees while our siblings threw rocks at us as a punishment. If Father knew about it we couldn’t have any friends to play with.

Mother and Father often talked about a traveling show they owned. They called it the Bare Cat Ramblers. Father said, Kitty walked the tight wire, (Mother is ‘Kitty’ or ‘Katy’). Aunt Joe and I were clowns. We lived in show tents and cooked outside like the Indians used to do. We traveled all over the United States. He said, I enjoyed this a great deal. That is the best way to live.

I don’t remember the traveling show business. My older sister, Vesta, told me she remembers it. She said she worried about Mother falling off the tight wire. No matter how Mother felt or how pregnant she was, Mother walked the tight wire. Vesta told me Father sometimes had her sing for the people while he played the guitar.

I looked at Mother as something that could be broken. She was very beautiful. Every last hair on her head had to be just so-so; when she sat, her dress had to lay just right. When speaking with other people she talked differently than she did when speaking to the family. We children considered her a special person; for her to give us any kind of attention made us feel special, too. She was easily irritated. Aunt Joe usually let her have her way.

Mother didn’t do much around the house; she did some cooking, especially if we were to have company. She loved to fix my hair in long corkscrew curls, which she combed around her finger. She liked doing this because people gave her attention over my curly hair. People always told her how pretty my hair was and that made her smile. A Salvation Army lady brought Mother some clothes for us. Father didn’t like it when Mother accepted them. Mother and Aunt Joe seemed to be afraid of making Father angry. If one of them thought something had happened, this might displease him and we could feel the tension in the air.

Father was the only person who could hurt Mother, which he did when he asked for Aunt Joe’s help. I believe he did this just to intimidate Mother. Mother didn’t fight back very often. She just took her punishment like a child. I believe the times Mother did fight back are the times I remember so vividly: the reason they were fighting and what was said. Aunt Joe and Father treated Mother like she was a dummy and Mother resented this.

Grandmother is a large Indian woman. It appears to me she was the boss of her house. Grandfather was a small, quiet Irish man. He might have been four feet tall. He had a dirty mouth, which always made Grandmother angry.

Aunt Joe is a large woman, and very demanding, like her mother in many ways. Mother is small like her father. Aunt Lois, Mother’s sister, was a deaf and mute teenage girl. She was always a shy, timid person. Uncle Junior (Mother’s brother) is older than Aunt Lois by a few years. Aunt Dorothy was Mother’s baby sister. Grandmother and Mother often argue over my age. Mother said, Aunt Dorothy is a few months older than Frankie. Grandmother said, She is two years and eight months older than Frankie. It is confusing when your family argues over your age. Who do you listen to? I had more faith in what Grandmother and Aunt Joe said. Many times it seems Mother didn’t understand what went on around her or it could be that she just didn’t care. There are more uncles and aunts but this is who was living in our Grandparent’s house at this time.

I can’t for the life of me remember what Father looks like. When I try to remember him I feel like a bowl of jelly inside, all the bad things he did to me come rushing into my mind. It is like I am this scared little child waiting to die any minute again, or praying he wouldn’t kill my sister. I don’t know if am afraid to remember, or if I just hate him so badly I can’t remember. What I do remember about him is that almost everyone was so afraid of him that they always did his bidding. When we had company from his work, he played the guitar or violin and sometimes drew beautiful pictures for us children. But this was only when he wanted to impress someone like his boss. He was an intelligent man and seemed to be able to do anything he wanted to.

Our grandparents owned some property thirty-five miles from Antigo, Wisconsin. Trees surrounded their house. I loved to visit them. I could hide in the trees or behind a bush and Father or Mother couldn’t find me. I often did this if I thought I was in trouble. When I couldn’t run away and hide, I ran to Grandmother because she never let our parents or Aunt Joe hurt us. A spanking was all right, but a beating was out of the question, as far as Grandmother was concerned. Life at her house was good. I feel she loved and wanted us; we were treated with kindness and allowed to be children.

I feared Father and Aunt Joe with all my heart. I also looked up to Father and believed that he could do anything he wanted to do. There was no one alive who could stop him. Aunt Joe could be kind at times. I have always had a desire to please people and I feel helpless and afraid when I fail to do this. I was able to have some success in life with the help of my foster mother, Mrs. Birmingham, who taught me the importance of getting an education and how to love and trust a few people. With the help of my mother-in-law, Wealthy, I was able to learn the skills in life to take care of my children. She taught me how to keep my children and myself alive in this world. These skills didn’t come easy: I owed Wealthy a lot and didn’t even realize it, or say thank-you. Now that I am getting older, I would like to play with my grandchild and great-grandchild without having to take the responsibility for their care. My ultimate goal is to travel some, while I am still physically able to do so. It would be nice to take one of my grandchildren with me from time to time. I would enjoy this. This would also give Audriannia some company with other children. It must be hard for her to live with a couple of old people. She is our granddaughter whom my husband and I have custody of.

Chapter 1 

This is my life the way I remember it.

We live on the third floor of an apartment building on Armitage Street in Chicago. Aunt Joe lives with us. Mr. and Mrs. Newman live upstairs; they are friends of Mother’s. The Coffman store sets on the comer. My first memory is when Aunt Joe sat me on a round table to comb my hair. The table tips over and breaks some dishes. Mother and Aunt Joe fight over the broken dishes. Mother says, You stupid imbecile! You ornery bitch! How many times do I have to tell you not to sit the kids on the table? Aunt Joe retaliates by saying, At least I have the good enough sense to take care of them. I don’t sit on my ass reading all day. Father comes into dinning room and puts a stop to it. He says, Stop acting like children. They get busy and clean up the mess Aunt Joe and I made. I am just scratched. Mother and Aunt Joe’s fighting gives me a terrible headache, which makes me cry.

All of us children on the block like to play in front of Mr. Coffman’s grocery store. Sometimes Mr. Coffman gives us candy or some kind of goodie. He always tells me how pretty and cute I am. Mrs. Coffman lets me hold the dustpan for her while she cleans the floor in the store at night. She always brags on what a good helper I am. She always rewards me with a doughnut. I enjoy the attention they give me. Sometimes the fire hydrant in front of the Coffman store starts spewing out a lot of water. It is like someone turned on a big faucet. All the children like to play in it during the summer. Mr. Coffman doesn’t like it when we draw hopscotch on the sidewalk, or in the winter when we have snowball fights. This kind of stuff makes him unhappy with us but this is the only time he yells at us kids.

Mostly it is the bigger kids who do things like this. The smaller children sit on the curb and play in the mud a lot. We get ourselves awfully dirty. It is fun to get dirty. This makes Mother and Aunt Joe angry. They have to clean us up before Father gets home. It is fun to listen to them fuss at us for being so dirty. Father doesn’t want us playing outside or having any friends. The rule is that we talk to no one other than the family members. Father says, One of you will say the wrong thing and get me into a lot of trouble. What happens in this house is no one’s business but mine. Do all of you understand this?

Mother and Aunt Joe work as a nurse’s aid. Mother is taking an LPN course through the mail from the American School of Home Nursing. Mother says, Father is a lawyer, he graduated from a law school in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is also a member of the Bar Association. Mother tells all our neighbors Father is a lawyer. This must be important to her. I sense this makes her feel like she, too, is important. Father and Aunt Joe claim Mother is dumb: they say that her usefulness ended when their show went under. Mother desperately wants to prove them wrong. She intends to do this by getting her nursing degree.

Mother is proud when Father plays the violin and guitar while Vesta sings. I love it when the family can sit in the same room and not fight. We all gather around and listen to them. It is a lot of fun when Father draws pretty pictures for us kids; this doesn’t happen often unless we have company that Father is trying to impress. I can tell how happy this makes Mother because she seems to glow all over. I want to sing, too, when I get big like my sister; if Father will let me take lessons. I love music: I want to play the guitar, too.

When Father is at work, Mother and Aunt Joe lock any child that can walk outside. I remember begging Mother to let me in the apartment to use the bathroom but she refused. I go potty in the alley behind Mr. Coffman’s store. That is where I usually go. Mr. Coffman catches me and yells me out good. I cry and tell him Mother will not let me in until it is time for Father to come home. Mr. Coffman gives me a doughnut. He says, Never do that again, it is very dangerous. I will let you use my bathroom. From this day on he let me use his bathroom in the store. I love this old couple. I always try to listen and learn from them. I believe they love me.

When Father is at work some ladies come over to see Mother from time to time. They always leave something for Mother in bags. Father doesn’t know this and I am not going to tell him. If he finds out he won’t like it.

Delores is missing and everyone is looking for her. She is found in the basement hiding in the coal bin. She has coal all over her. Delores is crying and she has blood on her dress. I can’t see where the blood is coming from. Mother is very upset when she notices Father has coal dust all over him, too. Mother says, What have you done? You have molested this child! Mother is accusing Father of hurting Delores. Delores acts afraid to be in the same room with Father.

Aunt Joe says, You rotten cock sucking, mother fucking son of a bitch, don’t you think the three of us is enough for you? Mother says, You rotten dirty scoundrel, she is just a baby. They fight for a long time, Father is mean, but this time I feel sorry for him. What has he done that they are treating him so badly? I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Someone calls the police. When they knock on the door Mother opens it and says, Everything is okay. Mother picks Delores up and holds her in her arms, covering her bloody dress with her apron. The police ask a few questions, write on some paper and leave. As they leave they say, Keep the noise down, people are trying to sleep. We are tired of answering the complaints coming from this apartment.

Mother wants to take Delores to a doctor. Father says, No fucking way she is going to a doctor. She is my daughter and I have certain rights. I can do what I want with her. Then he asks in a loud voice, Josephine, what the hell were you doing in the basement anyway? Aunt Joe says, I was looking for your daughter and I found her, you son of a bitch; surely you can find someone a little older then this child to fuck. I don’t blame Father for hurting them this time. Father runs from the apartment and doesn’t come back that night. Mother doesn’t take my sister to the doctor. She does, however, try to comfort her. Delores gets to take a bath, and Mother allows her to play in the water. I can’t see anything wrong with Delores. Delores gets to sleep with Mother and Aunt Joe.

Mother and Aunt Joe fix us supper and put us to bed. For a change things are quiet, so I crawl in the closet and go to sleep. The closet is where I always like to sleep when I am upset. It also gives me a better place to think about things.

Aunt Joe takes Vesta to school the next morning. Father comes home from work late and Aunt Joe had supper ready. Things seem to be normal just the usual fussing over who is sleeping with whom. A few months went by and the usual fussing and fighting continue.

Mother and Aunt Joe often fight over who is going to sleep with Father. Sometimes they both sleep with him. This time Father wants Mother and Aunt Joe to sleep with us children, and Vesta to sleep with him. I will never forget the fighting that takes place this night. Someone calls the police. Father says, All you kids pretend to be asleep. We obey quickly, not a sound is made from any of us. Mother and Aunt Joe step out the window and stand on the ledge of the window sill outside.

Father answers the door. The police look around our house and find only the mess Mother and Aunt Joe made while fighting. They look in our closets with flashlights. When they leave Mother and Aunt Joe come back in the window. I can see how badly they are beaten. Both of them sleep with us children. Vesta sleeps with Father. I can hear Vesta crying. I wonder why she is unhappy. I feel sorry for her but there is nothing I can do to make her feel better. After a while Vesta comes back into the room with the rest of us children. I wet a wash cloth and wipe away some of the tears from my sister’s face as she cries. I lay down beside her until she falls asleep. Then I go to the hiding place in the closet. Some kind of a problem comes up over a woman at Father’s office. Mother and Father fight. Father has what Mother calls a suspension from work. Mother and Aunt Joe are not happy about this; it means Father can’t go to work for a while.

The next day, we ride a train to Grandmother’s house in Pelican Lake, Wisconsin. I am afraid of the train and this makes Father angry. Father is not in a good mood, he is still angry with Mother and Aunt Joe. He yells at me and says, I’m going beat your God dam ass if you don’t shut up! Mother says, Shut up yourself you are embarrassing me and everyone boarding this train, not to mention the fact that you are making us look like white trash. After we board the train it is fun to watch the things go flying by. It is also fun to watch the different way people dress and act.

My parents are quiet and not speaking to each another. When we get to Grandmother’s she gave us all a big hug, like she always does when we see her.

While we are at Grandmother’s, Father takes a belt to me. I am in Grandmother’s rhubarb patch. I am small enough to run under the kitchen table and hide under Grandmother’s dress, without bumping my head on the table. Grandmother takes a broom and hits Father with it. She chases him out into the yard. When she comes back into the kitchen one of her eyes is red. She says, No one will take a belt to a baby in my house. I wonder how he treats these children at home? Well, he won’t mistreat them here. We stay at Grandmother’s until Father’s suspension is over. Aunt Joe stays behind to work and keep the rent and utilities paid so we will have a place to go back to.

When we are at Grandmother’s we often sit in the yard and listen to the adults talk in the evening. This evening, as we are sitting in the yard listening to them, Father says, You kids might want to gather around and listen. Those of you old enough to understand might want to know something about your heritage some day.

He went on to say, My mother was an Indian girl, her Indian name was Blossom, but Father called her Mary. When Father married Mother his family disowned him for marrying an Indian girl. No one in his family would let Father or me into their homes. He was physically kicked out of the family. Father was very unhappy. He was under a lot of pressure and he started drinking moonshine. While my father was drunk he went with other women. Father’s brother, Uncle Fred, encouraged this. He felt Father should leave Mother and marry a white woman. He felt that would fix Father’s relationship with the rest of the family. I guess my Uncle Fred loved my father and was trying to help him. His intentions were good but this made things worse.

When Mother found out about Father’s unfaithfulness, he was afraid, because he knew the Indian ways: Father hid all the knives in the house, hoping Mother wouldn’t find them. He did everything he could under Indian law to keep Mother from hurting herself. He was only allowed to do so much without disgracing her more then he already had. While Father was at work, Mother told me to find a big kitchen knife and bring it to her. I got a large knife from where I had watched my Father hiding it. I gave Mother the knife. When she saw Father coming through the door that evening, she stabbed herself in the stomach with it several times. My Mother died before Father could get help for her. Mother committed suicide while her whole family watched because I gave her the knife my Father had hid.

She is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere near Guthrie, Oklahoma. I have always felt responsible for Mother’s death. I can’t even find her grave site to put flowers on it, or to tell her how sorry I am. He speaks very softly and I think he is crying. He says, There are many Indians buried in unmarked graves. Father’s family made fun of me and called me a half-breed. I was not very comfortable around them, you might say, I grew up alone. I learned to enjoy being alone. I just told the whole world to go to hell. I lived my live the way I wanted to.

I think, This is a very sad story.

Vesta asks, Father, why didn’t a grown person stop you from giving your mother this knife? If they were standing there, just watching and doing nothing, someone should have stopped you. Father replies, It’s an Indian tradition, when a man is unfaithful to an Indian girl, the Indian girl kills herself, to show how much her and her family have been disgraced. No one has the right to interfere with her actions. My father broke the Indian law when he hid the knives from her and because I gave Mother the knife, Mother’s tribe rejected me after Mother’s death. Indian people have laws different from white man’s laws. The Indiana people are a very proud people. She made the choice to protect her family’s honor. She felt she was doing what was expected of her. I wish she had thought about me, I had to grow up without a mother.

Delores, La Verne, and I whisper to each other and wonder if this is what made Father so mean. La Verne is also my sister.

La Verne asks, Why didn’t your father get a beautiful grave stone to mark her grave so you can find her? Father replies, It was against the white man’s law to mark an Indian’s grave. You see, in those days, an Indian didn’t have the status of a white person’s pet pig. White men chased the Indiana people off their land, then tried to annihilate them. He sounds very bitter.

We look at our skin. Delores says to La Verne, Yep, we are white. Father continues: The Indians could no longer provide food and shelter for their families. Indian’s were tortured, made fun of and allowed to die for lack of food. White men only gave them the lowest kind of jobs.

The United States government offered them handouts instead of allowing them to live and work on their own land. Many of the Indians refused the handouts because they were ashamed to accept welfare. The government does not give them the amount of food they had promised. The only thing the Indians wanted was the right to live on their land and be allowed to take care of their own families. Many Indian children died from the lack of food.

White people are wasteful and greedy, they think only of what they want. They don’t understand nature or how to preserve wild life or care for the land. They destroyed the animals and the land for the sheer fun of it. Indians killed the animals for food only. They didn’t know much about gardening. But they also were going around blowing big holes in the ground with dynamite. The Indiana’s outsmarted the white people’s government; the Indian people are smarter than white people.

Today the government of the United States pays the Indiana people a monthly check for the suffering they caused them. The white people won the physical battle, but the Indian people won the moral battle. Today most Indian people don’t even know about their heritage. Only a few tribes have tried to preserve some heritage for their young people; they hold yearly celebrations hoping this will help teach them the customs and beliefs of their ancestors. Many still live on reservations and still try to use their laws as much as our government will allow them to.

Another time while we were visiting our grandparents, Mother tells us what her life was like when she was a girl. She says, Father lost his eyesight while he was still quite young. Before Father lost his eyesight Father was a logger. He worked with several hundred men. They worked for long hours. Some of the men slept in tents, others slept in Father’s barn. They had a very large tent they used as a kitchen and dinning room. We were finically in good shape. We had everything we needed and almost everything we wanted. We were spoiled.

When Father started to lose his eyesight he still had to work. He even tried to work after he couldn’t see at all. He nearly cut his leg off sawing down a tree. He had to quit working. Things changed for my family. We had no way to support ourselves. It was a rough time for us, but somehow it made us children stick together, and help each other more. It made us closer as a family.

I am the oldest child. It was my responsibility to help provide food for the family. It was necessary for me to work. I started cooking for the loggers. I cooked for at least two hundred men a day. It was long hours and hard work. To be able to have breakfast ready by 6 A.M., I had to start at 4 A.M. I served sandwiches for dinner, about noon. I served supper around 6 P.M. After the men had eaten it was my responsibility to wash all the dishes and clean things up. I was lucky if I finished by 10 P.M. I got so tired my legs hurt at night. There were times I didn’t think I could make it though the day. My brothers kept us in firewood, and sometimes helped me clean up at night. This helped me a lot more then they realized. It gave me more time to sleep. The only transportation we had was a horse and wagon in the summer and a horse and sled in the winter. It wasn’t easy for people to move around. We walked almost everywhere we went. My sister Fern fell in a snowdrift and almost froze to death. The whole county looked for her.

"That winter my little brother Jack died. The snow was so deep the horses couldn’t go anywhere. Father couldn’t take my little brother to the doctor. My parents might have been able to save him, if the roads had not been impassable. When my brother died my parents put him in the back room where it was cold. I often